


your fingerprints in my bleeding heart

by corrupted_voracity



Series: topgoro week │ january 2021 [7]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternative Universe - Mafia, Anal Sex, Blood, Bottom Persona 5 Protagonist, M/M, Mafia Typical Violence, Minor Character Death, Prostitution, Ren wears a dress in one scene, Tattoos, Top Akechi Goro, porn with plot?, surprisingly soft at some parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28583973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corrupted_voracity/pseuds/corrupted_voracity
Summary: Ren comes into Akechi's possession.There's more to him than meets the eye.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Okumura Haru/Takamaki Ann (Implied)
Series: topgoro week │ january 2021 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093454
Comments: 15
Kudos: 207
Collections: TopGoroWeek #1 2021





	your fingerprints in my bleeding heart

**Author's Note:**

> Along with Day 1 & 3, this is the work I'm the proudest of!
> 
> **There's violence and blood in it, but not overly gory descriptions. It's a Mafia AU. Haru smokes.**
> 
> A big big big hug to [Lolo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLotus/pseuds/LovelyLotus) for helping me figure out some rough edges. Please feel warmly squeezed, love.
> 
> **day 7: prostitution**

.

.

.

“You’re late.”

Akechi doesn’t say anything as he exits the car, slinging his coat over his shoulder to take in the large mansion in front of them.

It’s big, probably something in renaissance style if he cared enough to analyze it beyond its layout, with a matching compound so big it suggests a trivial sort of insecurity.

The car behind him speeds away, leaving them alone under a veil of darkness, and he turns to the woman beside him with a disinterested look.

“You’re early,” Akechi grunts in response. “Orders?”

Okumura’s smile is as sharp as the knives she hides under her sleek, purple dress with a generous amount of cleavage weaker men would have fallen on their knees for.

She might have just come from a higher up’s party, judging by her outfit and pretty get-up – the job came in as urgent, after all, and Akechi himself only had around a minute to get ready for the car that was being sent to the entrance of Shido’s base.

Okumura probably also killed her target in that time limit, too. There’s the faintest stain of blood on her cheek she didn't bother removing. 

“Kaneshiro fucked up,” she chirps, gesturing towards the mansion and already reaching under her dress, “so we’re supposed to clean up for him. No survivors.”

Akechi sighs.

Kaneshiro is a good asset, eager to please. Malleable behind his large stack of money, but careless with his subordinates in the prostitution ring – he’ll most likely get replaced after this.

Akechi pulls his gun out of its holster, flicks off the safety.

“Shido doesn’t actually want it clean, does he?”

Okumura licks her knife in response.

.

.

.

Killing isn’t something Akechi necessarily enjoys, but it’s something he’s good at.

He and Okumura split up at the entrance after they’ve taken out the guards there, and Akechi shoots at everything that breathes and moves without discrimination, barely feeling the recoil shooting up the side of his arm.

Servants, prostitutes and poorly trained guards fall like dominoes in front of him, most dead before hitting the floor.

It’s pitiful, Akechi thinks as he reloads. That they can’t do anything, subjected to a fate that doesn’t favor them.

Toecurling screams resonate from the other end of the hall - most likely Okumura deciding to take a bit more time with one of her victims.

More kills for him.

Not to be outdone, Akechi quickly advances to the second and last level, repeating the process from the first floor. Kicking open rooms or letting guards come out of them one by one so he can tear an array of holes through their bodies.

His shoes are bloody and his pony tail is loose by the time he makes it to a door larger than the others.

Akechi does a quick shell count. Grimaces in disgust when he notices something else.

His brown coat sports a large blood stain, probably from when a woman tried to reach for him in false hopes, not thinking he’d shoot her at point blank range between the eyes.

He can’t really blame her.

It’d be his third coat this month.

Akechi looks back on the hallway – some splattered droplets adorn the windows, giving the impression it rains the wrong color outside.

The moonlight that shines through paints a surreal picture with all the bodies and blood Akechi left behind, creating an almost otherworldly sheen of silver.

It’s cruel poetry, really.

Akechi goes into the last room, ready to kill the main target that would wrap up their job.

Only to find out that it’s already been done, what looks suspiciously like a kitchen knife protruding from a naked man’s stomach in the middle of the bed, blood smeared all across him.

An unsightly mess no better than what Akechi left behind.

It’s one careless overseer of Kaneshiro’s prostitution rings less, but Akechi doesn’t lower his gun.

Okumura wouldn’t wield kitchen knives even if her life depended on it. She didn’t even pass him on his way here. 

The answer comes in form of the quietest of noises from a closet to his left.

Akechi approaches it while keeping a steady grip on his gun and pulls the door open, ready to fire.

Maybe it’s the tension that never lifted, not even when he saw Kamoshida dead. Maybe it’s because Akechi’s more perturbed than he’d like to admit over his ruined coat and the fact he could have simply left it in the car.

Whatever the reason is, Akechi hesitates for a split second – and it’s enough for him to take in the visual of a young man with his knees pulled up, arms wound around them, completely motionless.

He’s covered in garments barely worth calling clothing, not letting out a single sound that would have resonated louder in the silence creeping around them.

Blood stains the young man’s hands like he accidentally splashed paint over them.

It’s a striking color against the pale nuances of his skin.

Eventually, the male looks up from where he’d buried his face in his knees when realizing he isn’t shot immediately like all the other people Akechi didn’t so much as blink at before.

He’s pretty, Akechi thinks. A delicate sort of pretty that sits in the vulnerability of his large eyes, in the way droplets cling to his eyelashes like they yearn for an embrace. 

How he’s looking at Akechi like he’s here to save him, not knowing that Akechi is a reaper forced to walk on earth.

Akechi hesitates, and then doesn’t.

.

.

.

“What part,” a bloodstained Okumura sharply hisses, “of **no survivors** didn’t you understand? Who the fuck is that?”

Akechi smiles at her and presses the limp body in his arms even closer to him.

“A souvenir.”

.

.

.

There’s something enticing about the image of this young man wearing almost nothing underneath the coat Akechi gave him for a semblance of modesty, curled on his bed Akechi doesn’t share with anyone.

He doesn’t like ugly things touching his sheets, the reason why he takes sex anywhere else.

Loosening his tie to a less restrictive hold, Akechi sits down on one side of the bed. The new distribution of weight causes the body to slightly dip into his direction.

An unwrapped gift, an open invitation he could just grab.

Lips that would look enticing both bruised and shiny with spit, lovely curls of black framing a face Akechi would have seen on the cover of a magazine in another time that isn’t as heartless as this.

On an impulse, Akechi brushes the other’s mouth with the tip of a gloved finger.

He’s debating on prying those lips open, see and feel what would wait for him underneath, but he retracts his hand when the male stirs.

Eyes flutter open to reveal murky seas of gray.

Akechi lazily grins at him and curls a finger underneath the male’s chin. 

“What’s your name, darling?”

He takes note how the other barely looks fazed by the situation, merely blinking a few times before obediently opening his mouth.

There’s an almost resigned look on his face, a worn expression Akechi sees on new recruits and old veterans alike.

“Ren.”

“Ren,” Akechi repeats, deciding he likes how the name tastes in his mouth. 

Simple, but strong.

Meaningful.

“I’m Akechi.”

He tilts Ren’s head a bit higher to see faint, nearly healed bruises around his neck.

They look ugly.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“...to serve you?” Ren tentatively murmurs.

A different question, then.

“Do you know the man you killed?”

Akechi lets Ren’s head go when the other turns his head a little, staring at the ceiling with no little apathy.

Wasn’t his first kill, then, but Akechi also remembers his tear-stained, large eyes.

Far from innocent.

“Kamoshida owned me,” Ren answers. Shudders a little, like he’s remembering something distinctively unpleasant in spite of his lax expression. 

It’s clear that Ren is a prostitute in the way he carries himself, but there’s something off about him Akechi can’t quite grasp.

The tip of a blade Akechi’s tempted to sink a finger into, curious to see what path the blood will find on its way down.

Most likely related to how and why this pretty, little thing managed to kill its owner.

A wolf in sheep's clothing? A primal sort of desperation because Kamoshida planned on pushing Ren past limits that even breach the realm of his occupation?

Akechi stands up.

The motion has Ren involuntarily shifting again, the brown coat he had slung around himself becoming looser, revealing planes of blemished and unblemished skin at once.

It’s more tempting than a lot more people Akechi had seen writhing underneath him.

He averts his eyes, pulling off his tie fully.

“Follow me.”

Again, Ren barely hesitates at the command, although he does nearly trip when standing up. Akechi makes no move to steady him as he walks towards the door that would lead him to a bathroom, waiting with mild impatience for the other to catch up.

Ren does, shyly steps inside, keeps his eyes averted when he sees Akechi’s mostly undressed state.

Akechi would almost call the mild blush that adorns the other’s face cute, and wonders why Ren still possesses an ounce of shame when his profession consists of spreading his legs for people paying the right price.

.

.

.

Akechi is careful to keep his back averted in the shower. 

He also doesn’t touch Ren more than necessary, silently cleaning the both of them because the other is mostly frozen in whatever loop his mind trapped him in for the fragility of the moment. 

However, when he turns Ren around to wash his back, Akechi’s eyes linger on where white lines form a misshaped K at the base of his neck.

He follows the abhorrent brand with a finger.

Dark rage simmers, something he carefully puts aside for now.

Akechi can unlock it at a later point.

.

.

.

“S-sir-”

“Call me Akechi,” he murmurs. “I don’t want the same title you address everyone else with.”

His sheets feel warm, like always when he’s laid in them under a while, but Ren is even warmer against his front.

It’s a weird sensation – not an unwelcome one.

Akechi feels less cold than usual.

Ren is tense, but in a way that implies he’s not used to this.

How many have held him with something other than raw desire? How many times did Akechi subject others to the same, cruel treatment?

“Akechi-san,” Ren tries, the words sounding foreign from his lips, like the tip of a water droplet that won’t quite fall down the edge of a petal, “are you not going to…?”

All Akechi does is pull him closer, burying his face into still wet hair that smells like his own shampoo and a faint trickle of coffee and suppressed longing.

Distantly, he wonders where Ren came from.

Ren’s passiveness in all this makes Akechi assume there is no one expecting him anywhere, that he’s always been a toy to pass around from one to another, no higher purpose giving him false hope in the situations he found himself in.

Were his parents killed? Or had he been an orphan from the start?

It’s laughably easy to scoop up sick and brittle children from the streets, forcing them to work for the darker parts of a city that no one wants to turn an eye to.

In that regard, Akechi isn’t too much different.

He hums, breath fawning over Ren’s neck, and remembers what he’d seen in the shower.

“Kamoshida or Kaneshiro?”

Ren doesn’t answer until Akechi caresses his stomach with light brushes of his fingers.

It flutters underneath his touch, skittish and shy, despite the bruises he knows lay there.

Akechi can’t remember the last time he touched someone other than himself without his gloves.

“Kaneshiro.”

Ren lets out a stuttering exhale as he begins to meld against his front.

Their legs intertwine.

.

.

.

Akechi is awake the moment Ren gains consciousness in the middle of the night.

He weakens his hold for the other to unravel himself from their tightly interlocked state if he wants to.

There are a few heartbeats of silence where Ren moves away and stills, nearly out of Akechi’s grasp, and then Akechi’s front is warm again, a long exhale tentatively sweeping across his exposed collarbones before Ren tucks himself back underneath Akechi’s chin.

Scooting just a little closer.

.

.

.

To an outsider, Shido looks fierce and strong, as impeccable as a slate of glinting obsidian. A certain sternness mars his face everyone else mistakes as hardened experience.

Akechi knows it stems from something else.

You have to be willing to play a certain game if you want to be on top of everyone and maintain that position.

Shido doesn’t look back towards the trail of bodies he leaves.

“Why do _you_ want to do it?” Shido asks brusquely, skepticism clear in the cold burn of his eyes the glasses always fail to hide.

Akechi understands – he never goes to him voluntarily, never denies anything, never requests something.

It even surprises himself a little.

But how can he explain something as simple as _wanting_ to someone as dissociated like his father?

Maybe it’s an impulse. 

“I have some things to settle,” Akechi says instead, meeting Shido’s chilling gaze with the same intensity.

It’s the only thing that keeps him on top of the food chain in this organization, alongside his other skills.

For a second, Shido looks like he’ll decline, but perhaps he’s feeling the slightest bit of appreciation for everything Goro has done for him, for all the blood that refuses to leave him no matter how many times he cleans himself because Shido nods, makes a dismissive hand gesture, already turning his attention back to his paperwork.

Not appreciation, Akechi corrects himself – oppressed acknowledgment at best.

“Make sure he’s gone by tomorrow.”

Akechi bows, a curtain of hair falling over his face.

“Of course.”

.

.

.

There are arms around his mid section when he enters his room, and Akechi just barely suppresses the engraved instinct to throw the body to the floor and incapacitate it.

A mop of curly hair tickles his chin and nose next. Situations like these aren't explained in the books Akechi reads, but he thinks people usually put their hands around each other. 

He only manages one, awkward arm.

His own limbs feel foreign to him, something Akechi isn’t used to with how perfectly he controls his whole body in every waking hour.

Akechi sees a dead man on his floor, bleeding into the carpet, pants around his ankles.

“You were gone when I woke up,” Ren whispers into his neck. “I thought you’d leave me.”

Something possessive curls inside of Akechi’s chest, and he winds his other arm around Ren’s waist.

They shift into a more natural position.

Ren still smells a little bit like cinnamon and honey from the pancakes Akechi let one of the underlings deliver this morning.

“You seem capable of handling yourself,” Akechi remarks, gaze drifting.

The tray on the night table is empty aside from a plate. He doesn’t need to search long to find the corresponding fork and knife sticking out of a red throat.

Ren laughs. It’s an odd sound, beautiful, but broken around the edges.

Precisely why Akechi wants to hear it again.

“I know,” is all Ren says before he tugs at his tie to pull their mouths closer. “But I like being near you.”

_._

_._

_._

It’s irrational, Akechi thinks. That this is probably the most honest he’d been in his entire life.

And yet he can’t help it, the widening of his grin as he digs the heel of his boot further into the knife sticking out of Kaneshiro’s disgusting stomach.

Akechi isn’t as well acquainted with knives as Okumura is, but this is a target he’d have to _concentrate_ in order to miss.

Precision wasn’t really his aim anyway.

The satisfaction that fills him at hearing the screams resonate within Kaneshiro’s private room as Akechi applies just a bit more pressure is something that’s hard to describe.

It’s getting a little more difficult now – he’s starting to meet resistance.

More blood flows.

The carnage of red yarn and torn spider lilies surrounding them paints a quite beautiful picture, and Goro wonders if Ren would appreciate this. 

“M-mercy,” the plump of flesh pleads, blood spilling over his mouth in disgusting rivulets.

Akechi snarls, revels in the second round of gurgling screams he gets in turn for breaking five of Kaneshiro’s fingers with a swift stomp – the same, filthy appendages that carved irreparable damage into Ren’s skin.

He exhales. 

Then smiles pleasantly for what feels like the first time in years. “Pigs don’t talk. They scream.”

Kaneshiro does.

Blood drenches Akechi for the next hour, increasingly weaker pleads going unacknowledged, bouncing off of him to fall to the ground like the last pair of dead leaves clinging to a tree, succumbing to an endless winter. 

At some point Akechi can’t coax more sounds out of the pig’s disgusting mouth. He looks up, taking in his reflection in the part of the ceiling high mirror that isn’t painted a divine color.

There is no immaculate mask on his face. Unhinged and abhorrent emotions openly greet him instead.

Akechi smiles a bit wider, and decides he quite likes how his face contorts red. 

.

.

.

Freshly showered and on his way to his own room, Akechi passes one of the many lobbies Shido’s ridiculous base contains.

He’s not surprised to see Okumura lounging around one of the fancy tables, cigarette in mouth and cards in hand, Takamaki clinging to her arm in a matching, red dress that spills like a waterfall.

It’s a sight Akechi’s used to – the pair of devilish women often prey on fledgling in their organizations who haven’t learned to not accept a game from them just yet.

Akechi is, however, mildly taken back by the image of Ren sitting next to them – no longer dressed in Akechi’s clothes but rather in an elegant, black dress that must have belonged to either Okumura or Takamaki when they haven’t filled out quite yet, judging by how tightly it stretches across his chest.

Akechi feels something curl inside of him as he steps closer, watching Ren’s long legs uncross and cross through the slit of expensive garment under the table.

He’s wearing heels, too.

Black, like his hair and the interior of the cushions of the lobby and his eyes when light fails to illuminate them with liquid mercury. 

Takamaki makes a protesting sound. “Babe, you have to-”

“No. Fuck,” Okumura growls, not bothering to hide her frustration as she slams her current deck of cards onto the table. “I’m losing again.”

Even Akechi beat Okumura in poker only three times in their entire career of more or less working together.

He pretends he doesn’t keep count like she does, but he thinks Okumura knows anyway if the triumphant glint in her eyes whenever she smugly recites their score is anything to go by.

Akechi’s a little more than intrigued, especially because Okumura doesn’t lunge across the table to throttle Ren’s throat at her loss like she usually would with anyone else that isn't Takamaki, merely demanding another round.

Which means Okumura’s taken an irreversible liking to him. 

_Huh._

She and Takamaki huff as Ren lets out a soft laughter in response, fluttering his heavy eyelashes at them.

Those are directed at Akechi as he slides into the booth next to Ren.

“Having fun, darling?” Akechi asks, offering a suave smile. 

Ren looks a little surprised. Did he expect him to say something else?

Akechi could articulate a lot of thought right now – from how bothered he is that he’ll have to buy another coat yet again, to what he’s doing with the two women, to lewder comments on what he’d want to do to Ren in that dress.

Ren’s mouth forms a pretty curve before Akechi can choose the best option to go with and he leans into his side like he’s never been anywhere else.

“Mhm. Will you play with me, too?”

Ren makes no comment about the smell of rusted iron clinging to him, something Akechi actually put an effort into trying to get out this time.

He showered twice, and wonders why he even bothered.

Akechi adjusts his position a bit so Ren’s head can comfortably rest on his shoulder, deliberately ignoring the amused gaze of Okumura.

“Sure.”

Akechi loses all rounds and detests it, but Ren’s eyes are alive by the end of the night.

.

.

.

“How do you know I wouldn’t hurt you like everyone else?”

Akechi could squeeze so easily around the fragile throat in his hand. Bruise the skin on his hip and waist, everything he could reach.

If Ren lets him, that is.

His deadliness lies in the vulnerability of his face and body, in the blazing chaos that engulfs his form when nobody's looking.

Does Ren also know Akechi already killed for him only two days after they met?

The glint in the molten metal Ren has for eyes tells Akechi more than words could.

“You’re different,” is all Ren says, cupping Akechi’s cheek with faux gentleness.

Akechi would hate such a bland answer if he didn’t already know it goes much deeper than that, an area Ren isn’t willing to explore with him just yet, but lets him in on the knowledge as a silent promise for another time instead.

He takes his time peeling the slippery fabric of Ren’s dress off his body, exploring the skin underneath. Akechi lingers on the bruises of Ren’s past, some looking like they’ve never healed properly with how often they were inflicted in the same place.

He watches Ren eagerly expose his throat when Akechi closes a mouth around a pert nipple, and can’t help but wonder with a twist of horrible jealousy inside his stomach how many other people were privy to that view.

He wants to carve them out so that there’s only a shape in Ren’s heart he can fill.

And yet, when Akechi hikes one leg over his shoulder, what’s supposed to be Ren’s most used area is free of any injuries and marks. He softly presses a lubed finger to Ren’s entrance, watches pink flutter.

His suspicions are confirmed as soon as he breaches it, feeling an impossibly tight heat clamp around him like a vice. 

Ren’s back arches in response. Illicit sounds are muffled by one hand, the other digging into the sheets, and Akechi lets a shaky exhale loose. 

“You’re a virgin,” he murmurs into a soft thigh.

It takes a while for Ren to answer. It’s a flutter of a smile that drowns in the mellow darkness draped around them, only kept at bay by a dim lamp light.

Akechi’s pulse throbs in tandem. 

_Dangerous._

“I am,” Ren breathes. 

The image of two dead men staining two different rooms flashes before Akechi’s eyes.

A rush of darkness surges through him, a sensation he hasn’t felt in a long, long time – not this potent, not this tangent.

Like Akechi could grab it and pour it into a vial for them to admire.

How many people has Ren denied at the peak of their ill desires?

How many times did Ren watch blood flow onto expensive carpets, seep into dark floorboards with nothing more than tender pity?

Did Kaneshiro let him because he thought he could have the satisfaction of being the one to tame Ren at the end of it all?

“You think me better than the other men?” Akechi chuckles, curls his finger, simultaneously bites into skin with only teasing pressure.

Akechi is tempted to leave his own marks, but he doesn’t. Not yet, not when the proof Ren belonged to someone else before him is still splattered all over his body like spilled ink. 

He’s going to paint him anew when the last of Ren’s taints have been erased.

Today only marks the promise of a beginning.

Ren writhes when Akechi pushes the third finger in, but he manages to get an answer out despite the pleasure starting to cloud his expression.

“No, you’re worse than everyone else,” Ren gasps, toes curling as tantalizing as the corners of his mouth do. “You don’t- _ahh_ , hurt me.”

Akechi wants to tell him he killed so many people that his nightmares have long stopped, that rain feels like blood on his skin with how much it burns, the body of people in front of and underneath him having become mere mechanisms to figure out. 

All he does instead is grabbing the hand Kurusu uses to stifle some of his sounds, bringing it to his lips.

“I could,” Akechi aspirates, and kisses his knuckles.

Ren’s eyes widen momentarily, clearly having not having expected the out of place chivalry, and Akechi uses their momentary lapse in judgement to enter him.

He spends a while watching Ren try his best not to fall apart until he decides the view isn’t satisfactory, not good enough. Ren deserves more. 

So Akechi leans back, pulling the other along with him while making sure they stay connected.

And on top of Akechi with his cock deeply buried inside of him, Ren strikes a positively enthralling picture. Flushed cheeks, back arched into a pretty bow, befitting of how coyly he holds himself, gaze hooded and positively voracious.

All Akechi’s.

“You won’t,” Ren firmly answers, seemingly having gained his grounds. 

He splays fingers that killed men without hesitation across Akechi’s chest, and slowly starts to drag himself up and down his length.

Akechi hisses at the tightness, gripping onto Ren’s dainty hips to meet the other’s thrusts. Pleasure encases him, drags his mind into a foggy and hazy state where not much exists beyond the heat and languid unity of their bodies.

When Ren finally constricts around him, drawing five lines of red across his abs with sharp nails, Akechi throws his head back at the onslaught of different sensations overwhelming him - baring himself open in the process, showing that in the span of only two days, Akechi is willing to risk everything he sold his soul for in this very moment.

Hot lips instead of a blade meets his throat.

Akechi laughs huskily and drags Akira’s head up to meet him for a real kiss.

.

.

.

“Why?” Okumura drawls. 

She takes a drag of her cigarette and pushes the smoke out of her nostrils next. It curls around the air like low hanging clouds, dissipating into chilling morning air. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Akechi grunts.

He crosses his arms and leans against the railing of Okumura's balcony. Then, “What do you see in Takamaki?”

It’s a proof of the sheer amount of fondness she holds towards said woman that Okumura merely snorts at his obvious deflect in question.

Her eyes soften imperceptibly. Only through experience and observation skills does Akechi catch it.

It’s a small wonder itself - how her face tilts to the side ever so softly.

Her eyes are trained on the rise and fall of a body curled up in the sheets of her bed, barely visible through the dark glass separating balcony from room. 

“It’s less about what I see in her,” Okumura says, facing him again. 

He wonders if last night was a mistake. Letting his guard down like that, letting himself get swept away by the rapturous heat of the moment simply because it was something new and unfamiliar from anything else he encountered. 

Akechi should have killed him. 

Okumura takes another drag, slower this time. One finger travels up the side of her neck, brushing bruises and marks that are similar to his like an afterthought. 

Akechi can’t tell if she does it deliberately or unconsciously. 

“Ann is…” she breaks off, furrowing her eyebrows. “Do you think the world is ugly?

His answer comes slower than he likes.

“Who doesn’t?”

The world had been ugly when he was born. The world had been ugly when uniformed men dragged him away from his mother’s corpse, and the world Shido showed him afterwards was even uglier. 

It's why Akechi's here. He merely got used to it, so maybe that's why he's forgotten. 

With a matching glint in her eyes, Okumura sends the next exhale of smoke into the direction of his face. 

“Well. Ann reminds me it isn’t.”

.

.

.

“It’s pretty,” Ren tells him.

Akechi doesn’t know if he means the ink or the streaks of red across his back.

He hisses when Ren dabs particularly hard on a bruise around his left shoulder, involuntarily dipping the couch a little. And it’s strange – Akechi had come out of missions with far worse injuries, and yet they never quite hurt like this when he took care of them himself.

Does his perception of pain change when someone else is doing it for him?

Ren soothingly rubs on an uninjured part of his skin, most likely smearing blood on black feathers. Akechi can’t suppress a slight shiver.

Ren continues, undeterred. “You carry your past with you wherever you go. Not everyone can do that.”

Does Ren want to imply it’s a strength instead of a weakness?

Akechi had already forgiven his mother – she’d been drunk and he’d been too young and she is dead.

“It’s a memento,” Akechi answers in a raspy voice. His own words sound a little foreign to him, so he clears his throat and hates how constrained it now seems. “Nothing more.”

“It's proof you care,” Ren corrects him.

Akechi remains motionless for the next hour, letting Ren clean and address his wounds, silently enjoying how his small fingers trail over bare, marked skin.

Until he feels lips press against a specific place on his shoulder. Akechi’s cold heart flutters, and his breath imperceptibly hitches at each soft kiss gifted across the length of his scar.

He turns when Ren reaches the end of it. The throbbing of his wounds is drowned by other sensations, and Akechi catches Ren’s face with one hand.

The grey in his eyes remind Akechi of the smoke Okumura blew into his face a week ago.

“...maybe I do,” he murmurs slowly, thumbing under an eye. “Just not for everyone. Not anymore.”

Ren hums and presses a kiss to Akechi’s palm.

.

.

.

“Will he become a liability?”

Akechi bows deeply. He keeps his face impassive, in perfect control despite the fact Shido can’t see him.

It’s a matter of principle.

“… he won’t.”

Perhaps he should have said something along the lines of I’ll dispose of him once he does, but then Akechi might not be telling the truth.

Not anymore.

He waits until he can hear the slight creak of a chair – a sign his father has leaned back, giving him his full attention.

Studying him like a specimen he could never figure out despite all the tests he conducted.

A rare thing, nowadays, seeing as Shido reads off a list of people for Akechi to kill like he’s sending him on a grocery trip without looking up once.

Shido’s gaze is hard, and his voice is even harder.

“Make sure he won’t.”

.

.

.

The first time Ren kills for him, Akechi has to take the gun out of his hands, something Ren hadn’t let go of for the entire ride back to Shido’s base.

“It feels different,” Ren admits in a quiet voice. “Killing for someone else other than you.”

Blood drips into the cushion of the armchair. Akechi made sure it isn’t his, checked twice before he even thought about removing his own, soiled attire, standing bare chested in the room that once only belonged to Akechi. 

There was no otherworldly force, no pressure, no anything for Ren to shoot the man that entered Akechi’s blind spot.

He did it out of his own volition.

Because he wanted to.

Ripples of illicit desire rake through Akechi before he forces them to still. 

He moves towards Ren, and when he’s close enough he lifts his chin to align their gazes. 

Ren’s eyes are cold, and yet they burn. A fire frozen in time.

“Do you regret it?” Akechi asks. 

He has to focus on keeping his voice level-headed. Calm and controlled, to not let recondite contentment at the notion of Ren killing for him shape his voice into something that’s still too early for the both of them.

It’ll come.

“… No. I don’t think so. But it’s a scary thought, don’t you think?” Ren says.

The past weeks and a triptych of Kaneshiro flashes in Akechi’s mind and he finds he has to agree. 

.

.

.

Akechi isn’t used to waiting for things he wants.

Technically, Akechi could easily snap the striped tie binding his wrists to his back. But he likes how in power Ren looks, perched upon him like Akechi’s lap is his throne to take, how he’s letting the energy he quietly keeps inside himself free for once.

Curling around the edges, filling the air with a haze Akechi could get drunk on.

Death straddles his hips in the most sinful form, and Akechi is the only person who gets away from sinking claws and teeths into it. 

“Like what you see?” Ren purrs, purposefully adjusting his shoulders in a way that the partially unbuttoned dress-shirt slips a little off his shoulder.

He looked dashing in a wine red suit with an equally colored drink in his hand, pressed into Akechi’s side as they chatted up a corrupt politician in the midst of a sea of masks and laughter and artificial lights.

Ren looked even better when he slotted his gun into their target’s mouth in the privacy of a bedroom an hour later, reveling in the blood that painted his face next. 

But now, Ren looks ravenous – obtainable, skin and smirk glowing from the success of their mission, the only piece of clothing adorning his body being Akechi’s very own dress-shirt. 

Akechi appreciates the tantalizing view for some seconds, drinks in the sight before he drags his eyes upwards to offer a dark smirk. 

“Poetry in motion, darling.”

Ren huffs, diverting Akechi’s attention away from the lightest of blushes coloring his cheeks by grinding his ass against the bulge he’s seated upon.

Akechi groans in irritation, unable to control the buck of his hips.

He can almost forgive all the others that came before him , thought Ren to be theirs– for a sight as beautiful as this, Akechi’s sure he’d bite into the apple as well.

And he does.

As Ren lowers himself onto his cock with a flutter of his lashes and a breathy sigh, Akechi surges forward to sink his teeth into a free shoulder. 

Hands bury themselves into his head immediately, loosening his tie in the process, encouraging him to take even more. 

There’s a primal urge within Akechi to break out of his restrains and chase the heat that’s taking him so well, but he’ll save that for later, when Ren has ridden them to completion so many times that he’d show signs of exhaustion and falter as a repercussion – just enough for Akechi to free himself, grip Ren’s waist and stand up, throwing him either onto the bed or against a wall to take back what Ren so greedily devoured.

Right now though, Akechi will wait. Opts to groan into Ren’s skin instead, closing his eyes to taste blood better and treasure sweet cries.

.

.

.

Akechi gives Ren his past and long buried fears. 

His summer and winter.

.

.

.

The time and notification on his phone tells him they have to assassinate another underdog that stirs trouble within Shido’s ranks, but Ren’s weight on him is too comfortable for Akechi to move.

He still has to collect a favor from Okumura.

Akechi sends her a quick message before he puts his phone away, resuming to draw patterns onto Ren’s back.

He drives his fingers higher and higher, feels each dip and knob of his spine he’s long memorized, until he brushes curls of ebony away to thumb over the scar that still fills him with as much hatred as in the beginning.

Possibly even more, despite the perpetrator being long dead.

Ren doesn’t tense, not anymore, but his hand on Akechi’s biceps tightens. To calm him, Akechi knows, but wrath takes a shape within him anyway.

“I can ask Kitagawa,” Akechi murmurs.

He’s wanted to propose this for a while, but never felt completely sure despite the promises and declarations they keep mumbling into each others’ mouth and necks.

Ren shifts his head a little to look at him. Akechi has his gaze trained on the revolting mark left on Ren’s skin.

The only one Akechi couldn’t overwrite with imprints of his teeth or bruises of his tongue, no matter how much he tried. 

“You know him, right?” he asks. 

Ren knows everyone in the organization. A social, but deadly butterfly. Akechi only lets him go because he knows he’ll always come back, always back into his arms at the end of the day.

Ren hums. “Did Yusuke paint yours?” 

Since the night Akechi had let Ren see it, it’s been Ren’s favorite place to touch – the wide arch of a crow’s wing across one half of his upper back.

It’s a vision Kitagawa offered him the first and last time Akechi had been caught off guard when changing his clothes for an infiltration mission, unintentionally baring the large scar for the world to see.

Showing it to Ren was his other, conscious decision. 

Kitagawa had only seen it for a fraction of a second, but the tattooist spoke to him with such passionate intent a week later that Akechi understood it wasn’t pity; merely an artist's curiosity that tragedy likes to befriend.

Ren never seems to get tired of mapping the feathers, whether it’s after a passionate dance or soft embraces.

He's prone to sneak his hand underneath Akechi’s coats and dress-shirts as well, only to recoil with a mirthful smile before he can get caught.

Ren doesn’t succeed very often, in that regard.

But Ren always brings the skin underneath his fingers to life with each line he traces, setting the ink ablaze. 

And sometimes it feels like Ren is drawing his own tale into the tattoo, giving it more meaning than it should have.

The vision of a world in its raw beauty. 

“He did,” Akechi murmurs, meeting Ren’s gaze.

Sees the swirling emotions in them that Akechi took a while to understand and now reads easily. 

Ren cocks his head. “Would I finally belong to you?”

Akechi doesn’t laugh at the question, remains serious as he brings one of Ren’s hands to his lips, brushing his wrist with a soft exhale.

“You’ve belonged to me the moment you killed for me, darling.”

Akechi presses a kiss to it and watches red bloom. 

.

.

.

In return, Ren gives Akechi his future and forsaken hopes.

His spring and autumn. 

His trust and love.

.

.

.

The only thing that’s more beautiful than the feathery, black dragon curling around Ren’s neck and shoulder is the brightness in his eyes, and perhaps the feeling that stirs within the old ashes of Akechi’s heart when their stories meet.

.

.

.

**< fin >**

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE go and check out[Ren in a dress with Akechi from this AU.](https://twitter.com/onionglitter/status/1367573847860408322?s=20) Thank you so much [ Fleur](https://twitter.com/onionglitter), it looks absolutely perfect.**
> 
> I hope you liked this Mafia AU as much as I liked writing it!
> 
> Haha I won't even explain it that much. Feel free to interpret what you think fits best. I'd especially love to hear your thoughts or comments on this one, it'd be the biggest reward for writing over 50k words for this series!
> 
> Other than that, thank you for anticipating and reading my stories! I hope I could feed some starved Akeshu folks with it. Topgoro week is over, but I have a bigger Akeshu one-shot planned for early February (that isn't a 2/2 fic).
> 
> **Please anticipate it. Again, thank you so much for reading!**
> 
> [My (mostly) Akeshu twitter!](https://twitter.com/voraciousTash)


End file.
